


Different

by SharpestRose



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Men (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Buffy/X-Men crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Different

  
1\. Early 1990, Boston

She'd been named after some aunt, a sister of her mom's. That pissed her off, because it was sloppy seconds. Someone else had got their sticky mitts all over it first. Plus she'd never felt like Anne was a name that fitted on her skin right.

So, whatever. Nobody had any reason to ask her for a name anyway, so she could just be herself.

She - the girl who wasn't Anne inside - was ten years and eight days old. She knew that because she'd been born on Christmas day, 'cept her mom was about as far from virginal as someone who had had a bunch of nasty sex, and Anne didn't think she'd be too keen on being a messiah anyway.

Boston was cold and dank and there sure wasn't any room at the inn, though. She was prying the loose panes out of the window at the back of a church gone halfway to ruin, reluctant to break the glass if she could get in without hurting it. Her pants were too big and her shirt was too small, because she'd been hungry for a long time but was very developed for ten. Anne didn't care. It wasn't like childhood was something she was gonna miss, and perhaps being curvy would make life easier. A warm bed was a warm bed, and right now she would have done anything and its brother for a warm bed.

Then she was in, and the place smelt like sandalwood incense and cheeseburgers. Seemed like she wasn't the first to take refuge here for the night.

"'lo? Anyone here?" she called, not considering that perhaps she should be on her guard. Before her mom had died there had been a succession of new daddies for Anne, not all of them human. She knew how to kill all kinds of scaly, cold, wicked things.

"Wer ist sie?" a voice asked warily from somewhere up in the rafters.

"It's ok, I don't bite if you don't," she called in reply. "I just wanna be outta the cold. I'll be out of here first thing in the morning. I'm just a girl. You know that word? Girl?"

"Maedchen." The speaker sounded like he was down near the front of the pews now. "That is how it is said in my language. Girl. But I can speak American, too, you see? Soon I shall blend in without a trace," he sounded as if his words were a wonderfully dark joke.

"Come out where I can see you, hey? Good manners," Anne wondered if she would have time to run away if this guy turned out to be a threat.

"All right. But don't be afraid, I don't eat little girls."

Anne was too busy feeling annoyed at being called 'little' to flinch when the man stepped into the light. He wasn't old, which put her at ease a bit - old guys, she'd learnt to watch out for, but young ones were safer as a rule.

Ok, so his skin was blue and he had a tail, but some things that looked perfectly normal were anything but, so the reverse was just as likely to be true.

"My name is Kurt," he said, almost shyly.

"Hi." She waved. "Have you got any burgers left?"

It was almost three months before she moved on, and then it was because child protection had been sniffing around and she didn't want to give Kurt trouble. She tried not to think about stuff that had to be done, 'cos dwelling never did any good, but she was real sad to go.

She'd never believed in religion and stuff before, but it was important to Kurt so she learnt how. The rosary beads felt nice between her fingers, the click-click soothed her. She liked the saints, pious and proud and martyred, and she liked the way the prayers sounded with half the words in one language and half in another, like something in a dream.

He liked to brush her hair, untangle the snarls and knots that seemed to grow there like weeds. He called her Maddy, for Maedchen, because she wouldn't tell him her name. Said she didn't have one. He'd smiled, and shown her a faded poster.

"I've had other names too, you see? A life, it's too long a story to have only one title."

She wasn't a Maddy any more than she'd been an Anne, but whatever. He'd given her so much, he could call her Strawberry Shortcake for all she cared.

But now it was over, and that was that, and now it was time to get gone.

"I will come with you, then," Kurt said, and it turned out that yellow eyes cried just the same as regular colored ones.

"No, I'm good on my own. Anyway, you don't wanna get stuck with me for the long haul, ok?" Her own voice was without tremor, and her hands barely shook on the knapsack straps. "It's ok if I keep the rosary, isn't it? I'm sorta fond of it."

"Maddy, it doesn't -"

She shook her head. "Nah, I'm not a Maddy, makes me think of little French girls in straight lines. Was never any good at behaving."

"What is your name, then?" he asked her. She shrugged.

"Why don't you tell me?"

He put his gentle, soft hands on her cheeks, and she tried not to think about why his thumbs came away wet.

"Faith," he said.

  
2\. Mid 1997, New Orleans

He was younger than her by a couple of years, but he had that look that told her he wasn't some punk kid. Or, at least, that he genuinely believed himself not to be.

He played with a lighter, click click click, never sparking the flame on but constantly threatening to. It's what drew her to him in the first place, the way he seemed to be daring the other occupants of the train carriage to comment.

She was two months out of that disaster with Steve - oh, yeah, brilliant plan, let's rip off half a mall in one go and then go back the next day in the same outfit, what a genius he had been - and had been distracted enough by the general lameness of life on the road to have gone without much contact of the sweaty bang-bang kind. But this kid looked like he had promise, at least for a couple of rounds.

"You got a name?" she asked. He shrugged.

"Yeah, most people do."

She raised her eyebrows. "Most guys your age would be too busy humping my leg to give me the brush off."

He moved one shoulder in an almost imperceptible shrug and snapped the lighter closed again with a sound that seemed to chop the air in two.

"You're the one who's interested, so you can do the work."

She sat back and stared out the window. "Screw that, kids like you are a penny a pound, I'll find someone more friendly." Which was a total lie, because friendly was boring and stupid and she had no intention of letting this one go. But it was always fun to make 'em beg.

"Ok," he relented. "St John."

"What?"

"My name. St John."

"Huh. I'm Faith. Think that means we'll have a religious experience?"

He grinned. "Sounds all right to me."

  
3\. Late 2003, New York

Rogue was fascinated with the scar on Faith's belly. It was an uneven line, thicker in the middle than at the edges, and spanned the space between her fingers when Rogue let her gloved hand touch the skin. And even with such a mark, Faith insisted she still loved the knife that did it, did not hate the almost-maybe lover who had pierced her.

They shared the scar, because Rogue had no mark to show where the sharp metal had punched through her own body, three stabs all at once in the chest, right through a lung and out the back. So Faith said 'hey, timeshare works for me,' jokingly one day, and now Rogue finally had a scar.

She'd ended up at Xavier's school by chance, same as everything else that had ever happened in her life. Now that there were little teenybop slayers cavorting all over the country, some system had to be worked out for their training. And, well, how many places were equipped to teach algebra in the morning and underwater kung-fu in the afternoon? Plus, it fitted in with Xavier's whole 'let's help the kids who are marginalised, powerful, and likely to get really pissed off at being marginalised, which isn't good because did we mention the powerful part?' life mission.

So now she was a teacher, which still made her laugh from time to time because, haha, her as a teacher?

But it was pretty ok, with a bunch of kids who needed her help and who, for a change, she could actually do some good for.

And Kurt, that had been a bolt from the blue (indigo-hued teleporter puns aside). It made sense, if you thought about it, but Faith still took it as a sign that this was where she was meant to be for now.

She had buds now, people who didn't seem to want her to toe some invisible line. Logan, who could drink her under the table when the beverage of choice was beer but couldn't hold his vodka, and Bobby and Rogue, who were friendly and funny and seemed to be mourning a loss of something that they loved, maybe. Bobby could do all sorts of cool (water-temperature-manipulating puns aside) tricks with his powers, and personally Faith thought Rogue seriously underestimated the amount of stuff that a psychic vaccuum cleaner could be used for. Kitty could run through walls, which made Kitty's new boyfriend Connor's increased reaction speeds and strength seem like pretty much nothing as far as abilities went. Faith liked Connor particularly, he reminded her of someone she couldn't quite remember, somehow.

And one day she was sitting with Rogue, who was telling Faith a private dream she held in her heart - to one day have a child, because even if there wasn't a 'cure' for her there were always turkey basters, right? And kids had their mother's antibodies and immune systems and stuff for a while, six to eighteen months. Maybe Rogue could hold her child, touch another's skin with her own. It was such a secret hope that Rogue had never told another soul before now, but she trusted that Faith would not tell anyone else and thereby jinx the chances of the plan working someday.

They were sitting by a lake, throwing bits of stale crust to some unenthused ducks, and Faith's eye caught their blurred reflections on the surface of the water. Two girls, dark eyes, full lips, dark locks falling around their faces. Different to normal people. But different together, now.


End file.
